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Sydneysiders could be unwittingly exposing themselves to the
risk of disease and causing long-term damage to their gardens as a
growing number of people divert bath and laundry water straight to
their backyards, according to the NSW Health Department.

Facing tough water restrictions, higher water prices from
October and with no end in sight to the drought, demand is rising
for simple water-recycling products sold at hardware stores that
automatically redirect grey water - water that has been used once
in the bathroom or laundry (excluding toilet water) - onto the
garden.

But neither Sydney Water nor NSW Health approves the products,
marketed as water savers and sold by the likes of Bunnings and
Mitre 10, sometimes for as little as $3, that pipe washing machine
water onto gardens.

"When people start putting these things together and exposing
themselves and others to their untreated waste and are using
substandard material that is not robust, there is the potential for
disease outbreaks," said a Health Department spokesman, Neil Shaw.
"It comes back to having proper sanitation," he said.

Health guidelines stipulate that untreated grey water should not
be put directly onto gardens and should be filtered before being
injected under the soil.

The risk of using untreated grey water is twofold - human and
environmental - according to the deputy director of the University
of NSW's water and waste centre, Professor Nicholas Ashbolt. "There
is the human health risk because grey water, despite looking
relatively clean, contains faecal matter from clothing and our
bodies.

"Then, if you keep doing it regularly you will be adding a lot
of phosphate to the garden, and there is also an issue of the salt
in clothes-washing powder."

He said that if grey water was released under the soil,
contaminants were trapped and contained under the surface.

However, if it was hosed directly onto a garden there was a risk
of over-irrigation or run-off into drains or a neighbour's yard
where children, their toys or pets might come in contact with it,
he said.

Mitre 10's merchandise controller, Craig Morris, said devices
that extended the "black snake" hoses at the back of washing
machines out onto gardens were the most popular with customers
because they were cheap and simple. People were reluctant to pay
for a plumber to install more complicated products, he said.

A Sydney sustainability consultant, Michael Mobbs, said the
Health Department's fears were overblown and in his 15 years of
working with water-saving projects he had seen no evidence that
people were putting themselves at risk from reusing grey water.

"It is part of the Australian tradition to take grey water out
and put it on the garden," said Mr Mobbs. "It would be good if [the
Health Department] could have a public debate about this and
publish all their research."